Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Alien Female Catholic Flowers

Flowers are like good Catholic girls. They doll themselves up to look attractive, but you can’t have any of the sweet stuff unless you help them reproduce.

I’m not a botanist, so I don’t know very much about flowers, other than the ones I see. Here in Florida, there are lots of flowering plants, but most seem to follow the radial symmetry model of roses and daisies.

A few, such as some members of the Orchid family, are different because they’re bilaterally symmetrical.

One popular type of bilaterally symmetrical flowering plant in Florida is the Bird of Paradise. We have several in our yard, and I believe they must have served as the inspiration for the film, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

The plant sends up a spear-like shoot that develops a pod at the tip, which bends 90 degrees and develops a rosy glow:

bud1


The pod swells ominously, then ruptures along the top seam, exuding globs of gelatinous goo:

bud2


Finally, the petals of the flower pop out like a creepy alien party favor – bright orange, with a blue, tongue-like piece in the middle:

bud3


No other flower looks quite like this, so I’m convinced it’s not of this earth. I came to that conclusion about Catholic girls a long time ago.

1 comment:

Burton Meahl said...

Nice! How long did you have to sit there to take these shots?